Aug 28, 2008 - Day 87 and Day 88

Day 87, Aug 26, Today’s Plan; Go to Signal Hill and Cape Spear. We wake about the usual 8 am. Loll around with the room coffee, Do our morning Toilette, then go down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. We love it when a hotel has a restaurant and you don’t have to go looking for a Tim’s or Denny’s or whoever. We are done by 10 and out the door. The day is starting out nice; sunny and warm, so we decide to do the outdoor things today. The outdoor things are Signal Hill and Cape Spear. Signal Hill is just above the hotel. It’s about 250...

Aug 27, 2008 - Day 85 and Day 86

Day 85, Aug 24, Today’s Plan; Goin’ to Newfy lan’. We awake before 8am. Diesels are running. A large caravan of RV’s is leaving. They straggle out for the next couple of hours. Our ferry sails at 2:30pm, so we have plenty of time to watch the exodus. We have lunch at 11:30 and are antsy to get to the ferry terminal. We take some stuff out of the truck and replace it with luggage. The reservation people told us to be at the terminal an hour early. Some fellow campers have said that is the minimum; two hours is better in case there is a...

Aug 16, 2008 - Salmonier to St. John's, Newfoundland

Yesterday was a rainy and windy day. We didn’t go golfing – in fact we didn’t do much of anything! I did spend some time on the internet and arranged for us to enter Newfoundland’s first AAC Agility Trial on Sunday, August 24. That should be really special. The weather was beautiful today. We had a short drive into St. John’s and got to drive on beautiful four-lane highway most of the way. The scenery varied quite a bit with certain sections having lots of trees and other sections having mostly ‘barrens’ with thin ground cover and lots of...

Aug 6, 2008 - Wednesday, St. John's, NL (185 miles)

Throughout Newfoundland we have been noticing some of the houses have front doors that don’t have steps up to them. There is no way someone could enter by these doors. We have wondered about this strange looking thing for a couple of weeks. We couldn’t figure it out until we read about it in one of our travel guides. The doors are called “mother-in-law entrances”. I guess that needs no explanation, but tradition has it that everyone who is welcome at a house comes to the back door. They certainly have a sense of humor!! Today we left the...

Jul 21, 2008 - St. John's,Nfld. July 21-26th

JULY 21st. WE have arrived to the most easterly part of Canada ,St John's two months from when we left Abbotsford. St John's is the oldest city in Canada also the province if Newfoundland WE both said we'er here as we pulled off the highway to our campsite C.A. Pippy campground this is not only just a campground also a 3400 acre park we're anxious to see what's all in the park.It has started to rain so we decided it's a good time to catch up on the computer.WE drove down to the Wharf to get ourselves accustomed to the town,then picked up...

Jul 20, 2008 - St. John,s, NF.

After leaving Twillingate we became separated from Peter & Carol. We went and visited Cape Bonavista. This was the first place Cabot landed in N. America. The mechanism that ran the lighthouse was made in Scotland and worked in Canada for over a 130 yr's. We saw a whale with a calf feeding right off shore. The cliffs had Puffins nesting on them. After leaving we went on to Clarenville where we camped at Wal-Mart. The next day we went on to St. John's arriving about 12:15 pm. We had to go to the overflow parking as our sight was not ready....

Jul 16, 2008 - The oldest city in North America

I decide that I am going to pay the big bucks and stay in downtown St. John’s, so after a lot of bumps and grinds over the internet I secure a place for $90 per night. I also luck-out and find a Kawasaki dealer in Gander and I am right on the nose for an oil job so I take Elsie for her check-up. I again luck out as they are not busy, like dah, what do they do in Gander for fun. I then head to the Gander Aviation Museum, small but rich in memorabilia. There’s delightful little De Havilland Tiger Moth, a DC3 cockpit, loads of uniforms, movies...

Jul 12, 2008 - The rest of our trip in Newfoundland!

......Continued The next day Reg took us out fishing on his boat, out along the Grand Lake and its adjoining tributaries. As it was only a small boat poor old Buddy had to be left ashore, much to his disgust. As you can see from the photos, Reg put us on to some good fishing and when the day was done he said it was the most successful session for the amount of time we were out that he has had in his seventeen years fishing on the lake (so he says!). After a fairly wet and cold boat ride home, getting the fish filleted and making up with...

Jul 9, 2008 - The Rock and Mile Zero

Once I picked up Paige in Halifax (stayed at a great hotel called Halliburton Inn... no relation to Cheney) we were off to North Sydney and the ferry. It was a great six hour trip, very calm seas and beautiful fog when we reached Port Aux Basque. The first sight of land was of a lighthouse on a rock with some shrubbery (cue Monty Python troop): it was all that I had expected it to be! This stereotype would soon have to be adjusted, but more on that later... Once we made land we decided to head directly east on a dead end section of highway...

Jul 4, 2008 - More Newfoundland

Our first day in NL (the official abbreviation for Newfoundland) was beautiful weather wise in that it was bright & sunny – only 13C (56F) mind you but at least sunny. We left our rv at the park and traveled down the coast to Cape St Mary Ecological Reserve – one of the most famous birding colonies in NL – similar in some respects to the gannet colony at Ile Bonaventure in Gaspesie, but only half the number of birds and no boat trip required. A mere 60,000 gannets and many thousand murres. Still a very impressive sight. On the way down, we...

Sep 27, 2007 - St. John's, Newfoundland

St. John's was a charming little city. It's the only city on the island and has a population of 100,000. There are a lot of young folks and a huge music scene. There is live music everywhere and every night. There are many old buildings and brightly painted row houses that go up and down the hills, sort of like a little San Francisco. Cruise ships stop here one last time before heading back to England from New England and the St. Lawrence Seaway. The trip back to Nova Scotia was not as smooth as the trip over. The seas were at least 10-12...

Sep 4, 2007 - Holyrood to St. John's Newfoundland

Another fairly decent day however it was cool with rain predicted for the afternoon and it was quite windy. We headed north along Conception Bay then east to St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland and the largest city. Our first stop was a Tim Hortons were the bike promptly blew over as soon as we got into the resturant. A great way to start the day. Along the coast we came across an oil drilling platform in the bay. Although it was quite a distance away it was clearly a massive structure. It appeared to be in transit rather than...